THE NEW YORKER coat. "I enter," he then declaimed, "as Dr. J ekyll, a gentleman of affairs. But-presto, chango," and he stepped out of his trousers, "1 stand before you as Mr. Hyde, in overalls, ready to lay your linoleum." He went right to work. Turned out it was Mr. Padawer himself, heroically breasting the depression. Tiger Bone brandies as we do, out of grape or fruit juices. Instead they steep fruits and other things in alcohol and water. As for instance, Loi Yang Sin Lu, which is made from something that isn't itself good to eat, but which looks like an apricot. The fruit is dried in the sun and then put in wooden barrels to soak for twelve years in a twenty-eight- per-cent-alcohol solution. The result is a pale-gold liquid. There's a Chinese custom, still maintained by die-hards, that homemade and not store-bought wine must be served in one's own home to visitors. This is called Yak J ow, or "private wine." For the making of this in America, a certain kind of rice cake is imported. The householder drops this into five gallons of water and adds various herbs, and, if he is wealthy and wants to splurge, all sorts of things, such as flower petals, or dried birds, fish, or horns. You couldn't find any of this in Chinatown, but a Chinaman could. At some vague point, the Chinese liquor list trails off into pharmacopæia. F or instance, the most expensive fluid in Chinatown is tiger-bone liqueur, which is medicinal. It costs $4.50 a quart, but is worth it because it pro- motes virility, cures anemia, and pro- longs life. Its beneficial ingredient is the dried bones of tigers which are killed somewhere around Tientsin. The skele- T HE Chinese, it seems, aren't quite the abstemious people that legend makes them out. At least a score of Chinese drinks are on sale in the city, and there are two liquor stores in Chinatown devoted to Oriental prod- ucts. Chinamen, however, seldom or never drink except while eating, be- cause otherwise "it dries you up." But at social gatherings and banquets, such as the recent N ew Year's parties, they may put away a lot, taking only one kind of drink at a meal, though, and never mixing, it is to be noted. We're reliably informed that the base of all Chinese liquor, one way or an- other, is rice alcohol. A bou t their most popular and strongest drink is Na Ka Pei, which comes in gourd-shaped earthenware bottles selling at $2.60 a fifth. The name means "juice of five barks;" except for that clue, its in- gredients are a guild secret in China, w here it is made by only one firm. It is reddish gold in color and smells like rich, dark chew- ing tobacco, heavily dosed with molasses. That makes it pro- bably the sweetest- scen ted of all the Ce- lestial drinks; some of the beverages, to the Occidental naris, are downright foul. The second most popular Chinese drink is pro- bably Mui Kwei Lu, a very pale green drink made by steeping rose leaves and other things, unnamed, in rice alcohol. It comes in a glazed, cylindrical bottle en tirel y pasted over with red stickers and looking like a package of firecrack- ers. It tastes like an oversweet Tokay, with mysterious ad- ditions. In China they don't make wines or 17 tons of these tigers are hung up in the sun for several months until thorough- ly dry. They are then steeped in an alcohol solution for fifteen years, by which time they're more or less dis- solved. The tiger-bone drinker gets the essence of tiger "iron" and plenty of accumulated sunlight. He lives to an old age, barring accidents, and is re- markably preserved after death. Snake wines, made from dried serpents of va- rious kinds, are highly prized in China. There's only one on sale here, how- ever-ninety-five cents for eleven ounces. Good for coughs and colds. W e asked about a wine called Wu Kark and were told it is made from the skeletons of hermaphroditic raccoons. Three Chinamen substantiated this story. Dazed, we called up the Natural History Museum on that one. They couldn't help us. Right there we dropped the Chinese-liquor situation; we earnestly advise you to, too. . B LaSSO MING-of -spring-and- re- awakening-of-gallantry note: A lady, descending hastily and with some ado from the sun. deck of a Fifth A venue bus before it had come to a stop, was cautioned by the conductor. "I wouldn't want you to fall," he said, "any place other than into my arms." "Perhaps this will refresh your n en ory "